Adapting to Climatic Extremes: Do Grazing Management Strategies Matter?

Abstract

Frequent and extreme weather events have increased the need for improved grazing land management strategies that can withstand these disturbances. Alternative grazing strategies of rotational and supplemental forage cover crop use have been suggested as producing greater environmental benefits than prevailing practices of continuous use with supplemental forage oat grazing in pasturelands. How plant and animal performance differs by these grazing strategies, especially during climactic extremes, however, is unknown as it requires long-term studies that occur across common land management (large) spatial scales. Dynamic precipitation patterns in central Texas provide a unique environment to test the differences in grazing management strategies by weather inputs. For this study, we sought to compare plant production and animal nutrition between alternative adaptive grazing land management strategies of rotationally grazed pastures and forage cover crops to prevailing methods of continuously grazed pastures and supplemental forage oats across a 10-yr period in central Texas. Our results suggest that alternative strategies of rotational grazing with supplemental cover crops resulted in greater plant production, especially in ungrazed regions during drought, compared to prevailing practices of continuous pasture grazing with supplemental forage oats. Animal nutrition was, alternatively, inconclusive as fecal crude protein in cattle was greater when animals grazed the prevailing treatment of forage oats and continuously grazed pastures, although the ratio of digestible organic matter to crude protein was greater when cattle grazed the alternative treatment of rotational and cover crop pastures. Collectively, these results suggest that alternative grazing strategies may be more resistant to climatic extremes.